MCP Insights

A Look Back at 2017's Most Read Stories on MCP Insights

This past year, we launched an online repository of articles called MCP Insights. Our vision was to create a destination for public safety communications and government leaders to expand their knowledge, stay abreast of emerging trends within the industry and hear about new ideas that will help to advance the industry and ultimately, improve emergency response outcomes.

This article features the most shared posts among our readership this past year. Read on to learn more, and while you’re at it, subscribe to receive notifications when a new MCP Insight is released.

A Massive Outage that Affected PSAPs Across the US

In March 2017, an extensive outage impacted 911 service in a number of states. It revealed the need for increased communication among service providers during outages and similar incidents, but it also reminded us that PSAPs should take proactive steps to soften the impacts of unpredictable outages, beginning with an extensive refresh and review of their policies and procedures, as well as testing.

“Sunny-day” outages, like the one that occurred in March, is just another example of why the public safety communications sector needs to push forward with Next Generation 911 (NG911).

Covergence is Key When it Comes to NG911 and FirstNet

The public safety industry is on the brink of a major evolution—the foundation is being laid for end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP) communication networks from the caller all the way through to first responders in the field. Thirty-eight states have “opted-in” to FirstNet, and legislation to upgrade the nation’s 911 centers to NG911 was introduced earlier this week by the Congressional Next Gen 911 Caucus in the House of Representatives.

Mission Critical Partners is a strong advocate of the convergence of NG911 and the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN), being implemented by FirstNet, to give 911 professionals and first responders a seamless communications environment that enables the sharing of critical multimedia data—between the public, PSAPs and first responders.

An Infographic Depicting NG911 Technology Adoption

We’ve worked with countless agencies, regions and states to migrate their legacy 911 networks towards NG911, and we also study how industries adapt to transformative change similar to how the transition to NG911 is taking place within the public safety sector.

One well-known theory published by Everett M. Rogers, called the Diffusion of Innovation, was particularly interesting to us. It discusses five key groups and classifies them based on common characteristics they share when adapting to significant change.

We adapted this theory to help depict our prediction of how we expect NG911 adoption to take place.

In the last eighteen months, more than 112 cyber security incidents in 39 states, ranging from ransomware to hacking, have been documented. The severity of the impacts varied with each attack―and in many of these instances, 911 centers were crippled and lost service.

Cyber threats against 911 centers are growing in complexity and sophistication. As PSAPs become more interconnected, the threat will only escalate.

PSAP and IT Managers loved this post that discusses the types of cyber threats facing their organizations and these eight critical “must-haves” agencies should work towards when implementing a comprehensive and multi-faceted cyber security risk program.

Also, check out our infographic to make sure you have adequate protection in each area.

As always, we’re open to discussing any public safety communications topic on your mind. Feel free to tell us what you want to hear about in 2018 using the comments below, or feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts and questions on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Evolving the public safety industry

MCP Insights by Mission Critical Partners is the online destination for public safety leaders to expand their knowledge, stay abreast of trends, and discover innovative ideas to help implement change that will advance the industry... Because the mission matters.